Balancing Managerialism and Autonomy: A Panel Study of the Link Between Managerial Autonomy, Performance Goals, and Organizational Performance

Abstract

This article provides new evidence on the relationship between managerial autonomy, use of performance goals, and public service performance. Previous empirical studies have found seemingly inconsistent effects of managerial autonomy. As interests of agents may differ from wishes of principals, effects of autonomy may depend on whether superjacent levels couple managerial autonomy with a high focus on performance goals. Linking three waves of panel survey data from Danish school principals, local government, and student-level data, this article is able to rigorously test the link between managerial autonomy, use of performance goals, and organizational performance, measured as student achievements and student self-efficacy. We find that when managerial autonomy is accompanied by high use of performance goals from superjacent levels, there is evidence of performance improvement. Furthermore, when managerial autonomy and performance goals do not go hand in hand, organizational performance may even suffer.

Keywords:

• Managerial autonomy
• performance goals
• performance management
• public service performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The School Reforn of 2014 was adopted in the autumn of 2014 and thus after the first wave of the municipal survey.

2 The questionnaire and measurement of self-efficacy is developed and validated by the Danish Ministry of Education. Despite the first item in the index (“How do your teachers view your progress?”) we are somewhat limited in our abilities to test the scale and/or leave out items

3 For the test of the effect of managerial autonomy on performance, the direction of the overall trend in managerial autonomy is irrelevant. Some schools experienced higher autonomy, some lower, and some unchanged autonomy. In the analyses, we test whether these changes in managerial autonomy within a school are associated with changes in performance.

4 A Hausman test confirms that the random effects estimator will produce inconsistent results in our case.

Additional information

Funding

The data used in this article was collected for and funded by the Danish Ministry of Education.

Notes on contributors

Bente Bjørnholt

Bente Bjørnholt ([email protected]) is a senior researcher at VIVE—The Danish Center for Social Science Research. Her research interests include performance managmenet, evalution, and public management.

Stefan Boye

Stefan Boye ([email protected]) is a PhD Student at the Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership, Departement of Poltical Science, Aarhus University. His research interests include autonomy and motivation of public managers.

Maria Falk Mikkelsen

Maria Falk Mikkelsen ([email protected]) is a researcher at VIVE—The Danish Center for Social Science Research. Her research interest include managerial autonomy, performance management and performance information use.